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Friday, December 18, 2009

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes (Billy Collins)

First, her tippet made of tulle,easily lifted off her shoulders and laidon the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a morecomplicated matter with mother-of-pearlbuttons down the back,so tiny and numerous that it takes foreverbefore my hands can part the fabric,like a swimmer’s dividing water,and slip inside.

You will want to knowthat she was standingby an open window in an upstairs bedroom,motionless, a little wide-eyed,looking out at the orchard below,the white dress puddled at her feeton the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women’s undergarmentsin nineteenth-century Americais not to be waved off,and I proceeded like a polar explorerthrough clips, clasps, and moorings,catches, straps, and whalebone stays,sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebookit was like riding a swan into the night,but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,how her hair tumbled free of its pins,how there were sudden dasheswhenever we spoke.

What I can tell you isit was terribly quiet in Amherstthat Sabbath afternoon,nothing but a carriage passing the house,a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhalewhen I undid the very tophook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,the way some readers sigh when they realizethat Hope has feathers,that reason is a plank,that life is a loaded gunthat looks right at you with a yellow eye.